PlayStation 3

Sonic 06 has gone down as one of the blue hedgehog’s more divisive adventures. But like it or not some dedicated fans have gone through the trouble to recreate the game in the Unity engine. I’ll be checking it out on today’s shorter stream.

Sonic Unleashed is seen as one of the biggest 3D entries in the history of Sonic. Whether you like the werehog or not, it brought a massive overhaul to the game design philosophy of Sonic working in the third dimension. The beautiful environments based on real-life locations, fast gameplay and a unique lighting engine all housed under the “Hedgehog Engine” helped achieve a major milestone for fast-paced 3D platformers. Fast forward towards the end of the downer year that is 2016, it has brought us one thing that can shed some meaningful insight on the development of Sonic Unleashed; the release of an Xbox 360 preview build.

At least, the first disk.

Forum user N!NJA released the build two days ago and already there has been several discoveries thanks to the efforts of others data mining information, uploading screenshots, videos and more. In addition the build also comes with debugging tools that highlights NPC and enemy behavior status, camera direction and gameplay control modifiers. While you can run the build on a modified Xbox 360 console, it is recommended to use a dev kit as you may run into crashes forcing you to shut down the console.

Some of the notable differences include…

60fps! …but not very stable, lots of screen tearing and drops

Unused level and object layouts

Placeholder graphics

Old menu system seen in early E3 previews

Old GUI, especially for the Sonic the Werehog stages

…and more!

N!NJA promises to release builds for other Sonic titles in the near future. If you want a quick look at the preview build, hit the jump to check out some links! Stay up to date with the discoveries thread to see what all has been unearthed from the preview build thus far or take a look at the build for yourself in the discussion thread.

Multiplayer Showcase is the review show where you get to see me and some friends of mine play multiplayer games that have been long forgotten and give it a proper analysis by sharing our opinions on the game in a roundtable discussion to see how things have held up for gaming’s past brightest stars and lowest points.

This episode compares the boxing gloves to the green shells with the Mario Kart-inspired Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. I never got to play this game much with friends locally. I’ve certainly played it online some time ago, but as you might recall, there are limitations added when playing online, so playing with a group of people with everything unlocked lets everyone dig in for some four player action coupled with SEGA nostalgia.

SEGA and Sumo Digital have answered the demand for an official release of the soundtrack for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. While it has featured a physical release in Japan on two CDs, you can buy each CD digitally through your choice of Apple’s iTunes store or on AmazonMP3. Each CD is available for $9.99 USD, (Or $9.49 on Amazon at the time of this writing,) and£7.99 GBP, or you can purchase tracks individually.

For someone like me that’s been listening to this soundtrack in the most cumbersome way possible, (Try hooking up your phone to your car stereo and hoping all four G’s of your data connection can play songs off of YouTube and not stop to buffer every so often,) this could not have come at a better time for me.

Thanks to Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett and Retro Staff Member GerbilSoft for providing links to the soundtrack. If you’d like a complete listing of the songs, head over to VGMDB.

If you have a PlayStation 3 system and still haven’t got your were-hog action going, the PlayStation Store now carries Sonic Unleashedin the US for $19.99 USD, and EU/AU territories for £15.99 GBP / €19.99 EUR / $29.95 AUD, with of course the usual complimentary PAL price gouging for no extra product!

Unleashed joins this week’s store update along with Persona 4 in the US for $19.99 USD as well as Football Manager Classic on PlayStation Vita for EU/AU territories £29.99 GBP/€39.99 EUR/$54.95 AUD. Xbox 360 owners have been able to purchase a digital copy of Unleashed for quite some time, and is now providing benefit to those who want to do away with their physical library.

If you’ve missed our live stream shows, you’ll be happy to know that we archive (most) of our videos including our first look at Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed running on iOS as led by Guess Who. We’ve also got first looks of Sonic Dashand Crazy Taxi running on Android that showcase game features and commentary from the staff at Retro.

Be sure to follow our Vidya Retro on Twitch and YouTube for more first looks and other gameplay videos.

With the release of Typing of the Dead Overkill on Steam, we get to take a look at it along with other games in the House of the Dead series.

Update: Our livestream is over, but you can expect the Retro crew including Bartman3010, DavidTL, Overlord, Perfect Chaos Zero, GeneHF and Guess Who looking at several titles including The House of the Dead III, The House of the Dead 4, Zombie Revenge, and several random mobile games as well as The House of the Dead Overkill – Lost Reels, and the horrors of the mine cart in Sonic 4 Episode 1.